On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:23:22 +0000, Glenn Richards wrote:
Alex Butcher wrote:
Right, just looking at the Richer web site now. Bought a lot of kit
there over the years (the Bristol branch in particular), and I still
use them quite a lot.
Same here, though only bits and pieces until now. I'm happy that Richer
are a no-nonsense vendor a good few steps up from the likes of
Currys/Dixons/Comet et al.
Currys are great if you want to buy a fridge or freezer.
Generally, I'm a fan of John Lewis for white goods as they pricematch and
usually offer an extra year's warranty free. Their customer service is
always 'above average' too.
For cameras, I like Jessops or Bristol Cameras.
[snip]
possibly a MythTV HTPC I'm thinking of building.
Until I read this part I was thinking of Cambridge Azur stuff, which
really is rather good.
Was that the 540A Amp/540Cv2 CD/MS902i speaker bundle for 400? Or some
other combination of components?
I think I was looking at the 640 series, although the 540s are still very
good.
Don't know what the 902 speakers are like, but I'd imagine they'd be
pretty good. I've got the 908s myself (floorstanders with a 10" sub-bass
driver built into the side) and they're awesome.
If you do go for this system, it might be worth seeing if you can persuade
the nice man at Richer Sounds to upgrade you to a higher speaker in the
Mordaunt-Short range if you pay the difference.
Good point, seeing as they're all Richer Group-owned companies! Sadly,
though, the 902i are the top of the range of 'bookshelf' speakers that
Richer sell (unless you count the 903 rears and the architect wall
speakers).
[snip]
HT isn't really /that/ important to me (I feel that
surround sound is largely only being used by showy "effects movies" of
which I'm increasingly tiring, some impressive live music DVDs
notwithstanding)
[snip]
You'd be surprised actually. Once you get past the crash-bang-wallop demo
material, it's surprising that it's the subtle surround effects that make
the difference. On one particular DVD I have, the most impressive surround
moment is during an outdoor scene when you suddenly realise there's bird
song happening all around you.
Yes, I was looking at the next model down in Yamaha's range - the
RX-V657 for 300 notes. Or maybe, something at the bottom of the range
(e.g. RX-V357) with a plan to upgrade when the 757 is at the same
pricepoint.
As long as you get something with lots of digital inputs you'll be fine.
But if you're planning to get a basic model and upgrade later, then my
advice would be to get the better model straight away if your finances
will stretch. Otherwise it'll end up costing you just as much, perhaps
even slightly more.
It seems to me that AV amps, like lots of other technology, is on a rapid
development path, meaning that today's all-singing-all-dancing amp is next
year's 150GBP bargain special at Richer. In the meantime, I get to see
whether seperates are really for me, and earn interest on the difference
in price. I'll think about it. :-)
Let's say that by waiting you get the 757 for £100 less. You're probably
going to lose at least that much on depreciation of the "lesser" model. So
you haven't actually saved anything, and if it depreciates more than £100
you'll have ended up spending more.
Bear in mind with the 757 you're paying for the amplifier and
DSP/surround. (The model number starts DSP-AX, meaning there's no tuner.)
With the RX-V models you're paying for an AM/FM tuner, which you may or
may not want. There is an RX-V757 available, just as there was a receiver
version of my DSP-AX620, which surprisingly enough was called the RX-V620.
Expect to pay around £50 more for having the tuner.
I'm pretty sure I saw the DSP-AX757 for 399 in Sevenoaks on Saturday.
I'm still watching TV and DVDs on a 4:3 ex-rental CRT, and I have no
plans to upgrade it unless it dies (and it's gone eight years since I
bought it now).
Yup, ex-rental stuff is often a good deal. We bought a Panasonic TX25T2
25" 4:3 set in 1993, which lasted (with one repair) until December 2004. I
replaced it with another Panasonic, the 32" widescreen one that I bought
from Comet (mentioned above).
Yeah, I figure the rental companies will have access to better information
on reliability than I could hope to gather, since unreliable kit is
probably a sure fire way to lose their profit. I'm a bit more wary of
mechanical stuff after a Philips VCR I bought at the same time chewed a
tape and went back for a refund.
I also have a Ferguson 3V43 VCR (rebadged JVC HR-D725), manufactured June
1985, I bought it in December 1993 for £120 from Rumbelows (remember
them?)
Yup - that's where my first computer came from, a couple of decades ago. :-)
few repairs, new belts, new heads (£30, fitted them myself),
needed a new power supply in March 2001, but nearly 21 years on it's still
going strong. And the picture on it puts any modern VCR to shame.
Cost engineering; don'tcha love it? :-/
You'll find with most AV receivers that a DVD player makes a perfectly
good CD transport, provided you use the DAC in the AV amp.
Yes, that was precisely my thinking.
Other interesting thing - comparing using a Technics SL-PG590 as a
transport against a Toshiba SD-530, the DVD player actually sounds better
when the SPDIF signal is fed into an offboard DAC. There's more detail,
the sound is clearer and the soundstaging is more precise. Not sure why
this should be, but it's repeatable, have tested it using several
combinations of DAC, CD player and DVD player, using both optical and
co-ax digital connections.
Pass. Certainly, though, I've found that my DVD-Rom drives can rip CDs
(apparently flawlessly, though that could just be error correction) that
my audio CD players have problems playing.
[snip]
And when I got the DV-79... well I happened to be in the right place at
the right time. Radford Hi-Fi were closing down, and a bit of
negotiation secured me a DV-79 (worth £1,000) for about £530. :-)
Yeah, shame about Radford. Especially seeing as I wasn't in the market
when they were having their closing down sale. :-(
A chap in Audio Excellence offered the rule of thumb that if the CD
player is less than 200GBP, a DVD player into a 200GBP AV receiver will
probably sound better. What say you?
It's very difficult to say.
My Technics SL-PG590 sounded better going over SPDIF into the Yamaha 620
than over analogue (using the Yamaha's DAC instead of its own). But the
SD-530 sounded better than the Technics... and also had the benefit of
being able to play DVD-Audio.
I'd say that generally a decent DVD player into a £300 AV amp will
sound better than a £150 CD player. By "decent" I mean something like a
Toshiba or Cambridge Audio, not a "supermarket special". These will
generally have a high level of jitter on the digital outputs, which will
throw the error correction on the amplifier's DAC into overdrive. Which
in turn will make the sound... not so good.
Yeah, I was planning on using a Panasonic DVDS29 from Richer for 50GBP if
I went that route, and treat it as a consumable.
Incidentally, I suspect I might be doing this sooner rather than later
after a botched attempt to see if I could get sufficient access to replace
the laser PUH in my Aiwa midi (CPC Farnell sell the spare part for a
tenner...)
Cheers,
Alex.
--
Alex Butcher Brainbench MVP for Internet Security:
www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x5010dbff http://www.assursys.com/